


The Shadow of the Mountains

by hermitknut



Category: The Memoirs of Lady Trent - Marie Brennan
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief, Grieving, I did not tag this for major character death BUT, Trauma, dealing with death is still hard even if the person turns out to be alive later, given what this is about proceed with caution, technically it all turns out okay but you gotta do something with all that sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23331826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hermitknut/pseuds/hermitknut
Summary: Suhail does not like to recall the days he spent believing that he had lost Isabella.
Relationships: Isabella/Suhail
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	The Shadow of the Mountains

He does not like to think of those days.

Isabella has years she calls her grey years, when she conformed to society’s wishes and ceased, for a short while, to be herself. Suhail had understood, when she had described them to him, and held her close – he too, had had times of trying to deny himself, and they had indeed seemed dull and lightless.

They were a trivial suffering when compared to the days he spent in Hlamtse Rong, waiting for the season to turn so he might recover the remains of the woman he loved.

It was months, of course, but he never thinks about it like that. It was days, merciless days, one after another like graves in an endless row, each one dull and soft and full of occasion upon which to stumble over the pain of her loss again.

He did not speak to Thu, nor the villagers without need. He ate, he slept, he worked. Not on languages, beyond what he needed to get by. He could not bear it. He knew he would return to it, eventually, knew that he would need to in order to survive, that it would save him as her love of dragons had once saved Isabella… perhaps that was some brutal kind of fairness, he thought on one aching morning. That she had already mourned a spouse, if one of them had to die in the mountains it needs must fall out that he should mourn her in turn, to save her from doubling the weight. Nonsense, arrant nonsense, like flint in his heart, but he had found there was no sense in trying to contain his thoughts. They scuttered where they would; all he could do was continue with his required tasks despite them, ignoring them as much as he could.

The villagers avoided him, anyway. He was probably some kind of bad omen; they had known the group’s destination, after all, and they knew that he and Thu waited to retrieve the body of…

He could not picture her dead.

He did not want to, but that did not matter – he had enough thoughts that he did not want, and he could not stop them. This, he could not picture. Isabella seemed to radiate life, intensity, interest – if she were a goddess, it would have been of curiosity. She had seen him first, of course – diving from the cliff into the water. But he remembered seeing her the first time, too. On the verandah of the hotel, she had somehow created her own little pocket of studious quiet that, were he less intrigued, he would not dared have interrupt. But he could see the avid focus of her gaze, the way she seemed to tune out the whole rest of the world in her interest, and thought, just for a moment: _ah, like me._

That sounded terribly like some absurd claim of foreknowledge, looking back, but he did not think it was. Only an instant of recognition – of kinship. A sparkling, as it were, that grew and grew and grew –

\- and then was lost, in the cold snow of the mountainside.

He dreamt of her, of reaching through snow for her fingers, of the sands of the Labyrinth of Drakes turning to ice around them both, and oddly, worst of all, of opening the door to her study to find no trace of her or her work remaining. He knew he would have to return to Scirland, knew somewhere in his mind he would have to find the fortitude to put matters in order, to go through her work, her things – but whenever the thought came to him he pushed it back, lest he sink into the snow and never rise again.

He wakes in the darkness and for a long, choking moment he is back, standing in that ocean of loss, knowing he will have to rise and hunt and work, because the season is not there yet, he cannot go and find her yet –

‘Suhail?’

\- and then, her voice in the dark of their Falchester bedroom, her hand reaching over to him, clumsy with sleep. And he breathes.

He turns over in bed and pulls her gently into his arms as she succumbs to sleep again, his eyes open in the darkness, trying to match the rhythm of her breath.

He does not like to think of those days.

Perhaps one day, he will manage to stop.


End file.
